Photographs
by Of Kurtz
Summary: A series of vignettes about the members of the League; for my fic exchange with Thalaba.


Disclaimer: The graphic novel the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was created and is owned by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neil. The film adaptation is owned by 20th Century Fox. No illegal infringement is intended.

Hello everyone! A while ago I entered into a fic gift exchange with Thalaba. This is my first response, and I hope all readers will enjoy!

Prompt: "I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine" One Night in Bangkok, from the musical Chess

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White Fell

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No shoes could hold his massive feet. Henry was quick to bemoan after each transformation what could be assumed was his second greatest lament (the first, of course, being Edward's very existence): that so many beautiful leather Derbys met their premature deaths by impalement via Edward's massive toes. But there was four inches of snow on the ground and the temperature could no longer be judged in proper numbers. Henry's runty little frame couldn't take this cold so it was up to Hyde to trek across the great white wasteland, the bitter wind raking at his exposed flesh, the icy snow tearing up his calloused feet and leaving behind him a trail of enormous bloody footprints. Shoes, Brogues this time, were tied by the laces and hung around his neck, swinging with the rhythm of his great strides.

_That was very thoughtful of you. _Henry said quietly from the little corner of what was his, peering out of the keyhole of the veritable door he locked himself behind when Hyde was out.

"Anything to stop your bloody bitching." Hyde said aloud, and the other members of their ragtag group -- bound in heavy fur jackets, struggling against the cutting wind -- didn't even spare him a glance. In truth, Henry's incessant whining had nothing to do with it. The shoes were entirely practical: when Hyde was injured, the transformations back to Jekyll shrunk their injuries. Vice versa, Jekyll's wounds split in very much the same way his shirt seams did over Hyde's bulging muscles. No matter which way they cut it, the potion was short lived and Henry was going to have to be the one walking back; frostbitten feet would keep both of them laid of for weeks, if not months.

"The hunt is on."

It had all started months ago, with a tide of events that started with an asylum and were to hopefully, end there and then. It was Nemo that had muttered those words with a little glint of malicious pleasure. To Hyde, the sort of "hunt" the pikey was referring to was about as exciting as running over a pheasant in a hansom cab. Weeks had been spent puttering about in Nemo's oversized pillbox to London, Rome, Calais, and Athens, investigating. To which Hyde would remark, **Can't we just take a bit of lint and a dog turd to that Holmes duffer and be done with it? **Of course, Jekyll would politely confer the meaning of his words, to which the pervading opinion seemed to be that, at this stage, Hyde was better unseen and unheard. As if Jekyll were any better. Between his stuttering French and his flinching at every shadow on the East End, getting a few whores to loosen their lips would have been entertaining, at least.

In more ways than one.

**You know, Henry. **He had often remarked nonchalantly, usually when Henry was trying to work at bit of, "Je ne sais quoi" on a frog or two. **Piranhas can strip a cow of all its flesh in just a few minutes. But only if they've gone long enough without being fed. **

And, of course, Henry blathered on in his nervous, tinny little tone about how he was done, this was it, Hyde was over, things were finished, he was content to be a useless doctor, etceteras, etceteras, all the while twisting his hands and gnawing his fingernails like the worst of opium fiends.

And when the time came for action, they sat about strategizing. For hours.

**Tell them their strategy is to stay out of my way. **

"Hyde." Hyde's head snapped up at the words. The cold had killed her scent. Skinner -- Raffles -- whatever the bloody bugger was calling himself now -- had his very blue eyes trained on the top of a distant peak. The sky was cloud cast and just a shade darker than the smooth snowbanks, but Hyde saw the object of focus well enough.

They were a displaced spectacle of modernity in their cumbersome down coats against this white Styrian landscape. She was not. She might have been the essence of this winter-black forest, as insubstantial as a wraith, the white of her fur cape distinguished from the snow only by the slight movement the wind gave it. Beneath the fur she was only the slightest trail of blonde hair and fair skin, the piercing gaze of cold eyes that Hyde could feel boring into his own.

An axe, wicked and sharp as a lion's tooth, gleamed at her belt. As he watched, her thumb trailed over the curved metal like a lover. Predatory heat hit Hyde like a sledge hammer, filled him with an insistent red haze. He very nearly purred.

"White Fell." Mina had become stranger in the past month or so, and she didn't pronounce the name so much as it escaped her with in puff of frozen fog. Had Hyde turned to look, he would have seen how her pupils had grown and the whites of her eyes stained red. But by the time she shook her head slightly, cleared her throat and said, "Mr. Hyde, I trust you can handle--?" he was already gone.

He ran in a galloping, animal gate on all fours up the white slope and into the labyrinth of trees, his knuckles crushing the crisp snow and kicking up flurries. In this strange earthly limbo he was the only sound and movement, those behind him drowned by the primal, waterfall roar that filled his ears: the sound of his own ragged, impatient panting, blood thudding in his temples. His vision had narrowed, taken a red film. It didn't stop him from seeing her running to meet him: fast as a bullet, lithe and arched over the snow without seeming to touch it, her eyes never straying from his. Later inspection would show she left no footprints.

The collided like titans.

He got a faceful, a mouthful of snow and white fur and he grabbed at it, twisted for a sure handhold just as the deep bite of an axe collided with his back, sending out sprays of blood into the cold air. He howled. The red splatters hit the ground with a soft sound. He threw her from him.

It was not a woman that landed, but a great white wolf.

_Weren't you listening to the strategizing session? _Jekyll fretted. _Mina warned us about this--!_

The massive she-wolf crouched, bared her teeth. Her sides heaved with explosive breaths; the fluid muscles of her flanks tightened.

"For once in your life, Harry," Hyde said with a leering little grin as he dug his feet into the snow, and opened his arms, "shut up."

Henry obliged.

A twisted-metal sounding snarl, and the great beast leaped.

Two hundred pounds slammed into Hyde and he lost his balance; only a quick movement kept his neck from between those crushing jaws. Instead the fangs buried into his raised arm as he fell backwards with her in his embrace. Her sharp nails raked down his chest, tearing away what little of Jekyll's shirt remained, gouging deep into the skin. Her jaw snapped; the bone of his arm disintegrated between her jaws.

"Saucy bitch!" Hyde cried as his back hit the snow. He slammed his free hand hard into the side of great wolf's face. Her cheek buckled, blood spurting from her black gums and black nose; her grip loosened. He raised one massive, naked foot and slammed it against her breast, throwing her over his head with a yelping cry.

She rolled to her feet, but Hyde was faster. He tackled her, punching her snout twice before driving her back down to the snow with another hammering blow to the back. Pinning her head beneath one of his knees, he slammed down on her snout with his good hand. There was a crunching sound, like one of the surrounding branches had finally broken under the weight of the snow. Her pinned body was suddenly a flurry of activity, large paws digging deep trenches, revealing glimpses of mud and wet grass beneath the snow, her body kicking and scrambling wildly as hot blood bubbled up from the cracks between his fingers, warming them, bathing them in steam. She made this horrendous little gurgling noise and yet he felt, under his fingers, the bones begin to rearrange, to knit back together: as if to ensure his point that previously broken jaw snapped around his wrist, and crushed it.

"Whoring mother Mary!" Hyde screamed in glee as this she-beast bucked him off with a great thrust of her haunches, tearing a great strip of flesh from his arm as he was jerked loose of his hold. Hyde staggered up from the snow, icy air tearing in and out of his lungs as he fixed the crouched she-wolf with a wide, delirious grin. "Mother of Christ, I think I'm in love!"

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"Christ . . . what a bloody mess."

"Henry?"

There were great globs of bloody fur everywhere. The ground was painted in broad red impressionist streaks: the white world had become two-toned. Jekyll sat in the center of the scene, unmoving and unblinking, near naked and blood-painted, looking wholly like a displaced Amazonian savage. A piece of his scalp hung down into his eyes like a strip of wallpaper.

There was movement, impossibly, a great burp of blood from a few feet away from the dazed man, where a mess of fur and blood and ropes of guts and flesh like sponge cake lay in great sheets. The cold air smelled like old pennies.

"Are you alright, Henry?" Mina's sharp voice cut the frigid air like a bullet. The wind had stopped. She was an ugly scene as well, blood covering her mouth and her hands and her dress in a massacre-splash. From her hand dangled a very round package, wrapped in a sheet that was probably not originally red. That the sheet contained a severed head did not need to be said.

Gunshots. Nemo had unslung the rifle from his back and approached one of the scattered masses of gore and fired twice. All the trembling and jerking movements from the dismembered dog stopped.

Then they started again, slowly, like water draining from a sieve. With a slipping motion that defied the eye, the mangled corpse was no longer that of a wolf, but rather, that of a what might have once been a human being, wrapped in a bloodstained fur cape. The metal of her massive axe gleamed inches from a limp, dismembered hand in drift of bloodstained snow.

Jekyll stood suddenly, woodenly. He turned and walked a weaving gait over to the body, trembling like a newborn deer. He picked up the bloody fur cape; the dismembered torso rolled out of it.

Sawyer turned, and was noisily sick.

Jekyll, meanwhile, threw the fur cape over his own shoulders.

"--Henry?" Jekyll looked up with surprisingly clear eyes.

"Hyde says he wants it." In explanation, he raised one of his feet. The rest of him was clothed in bloody tatters. His feet, however, were encased within a classy pair of leather shoes. He tipped his head to one side in a caricature of attentive listening. "And he says that I owe him."

With an airy smile, he turned an started back towards the Nautilus, stopping only to pluck the axe from the snow.

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White Fell is a character from The Were-Wolf by Clemence Housman (1896)


End file.
